Conservative Board Went With Its Gut In Picking Nichol

On My Mind

Gene R. Nichol's selection as the College of William and Mary's 26th president has been enthusiastically received by the faculty and students, but his appointment was hardly a likely outcome.

William and Mary's governing board is notably decorated with prominent Republicans. A former U.S. attorney general, a former U.S. secretary of state, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a chief of staff to U.S. Sen. John Warner sit within its ranks.

There are other accomplished personalities rounding out the board, but "there are no liberals," one college official remarked last week.

So, pray tell, how does this board of trustees find its way to Gene Nichol, who twice ran for office in Colorado as a grass-roots, Paul Wellstone-styled Democrat, who laces his speeches with quotes from Tony Kushner, Barney Frank and Ralph Ellison?

Not because of his politics, perhaps, but in spite of it. The consensus view appears to be that board members were taken by Nichol, by his personality, intelligence, charm and energy. They liked him. He fit the bill, whatever the bill was.

Having spent a large chunk of my life writing speeches for corporate chieftains, I have been taught that subjectivity easily trumps objectivity in the selection process at the highest levels. Once you get to the final candidates, there's a tendency to go with your gut -- and then hope for the best.

This board may have done likewise, but within the bounds of informed opinion.

Ten years ago, the American Association of Governing Boards established an independent national commission, chaired by former Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, to examine academic leadership at a time of "equivocal public support."

The conclusion: "We found that the most important factor was that the academic presidency has become much too weak."

The obvious remedy: stronger leaders, strongly backed by their boards.

"Select presidents who are truly capable of leading their particular institutions as change agents and risk takers," the report said.

The commission urged academic presidents to "formulate a vision of the institution's future, build consensus around it, and take the risks required to achieve that vision, on campus and beyond."

That word "risk" keeps popping up in this report as a good thing -- and give the William and Mary board credit, there were safer choices available to them than Nichol.

But then there's the other part: The academic leadership commission worried about the tendency of public governing boards to go weak in the knees when the heat was on. "To be blunt, the commission discovered that many presidents in the public sector view their governing boards as their foremost problem."

Why? Because public governing boards get appointed by public officeholders and tend to be political themselves.

In William and Mary's case, that seems not to have been the issue. This board has managed to be political and smart, too. Smart enough, in fact, to know that appointing Nichol to be Sullivan's successor, the culmination of an exhausting process, may prove a prelude to more interesting times yet.

As Monday's "Great Hall" announcement ceremony broke up, someone asked Nichol if he knew Sullivan when the two were at the law school together. Oh yes, he said, "I knew him before he became Mr. Chips."

This is funny and dead accurate. In recent years, as political controversies have subsided, Sullivan -- an Anglophile to the core -- has assumed a genial, nonthreatening public persona, not unlike James Hilton's eccentric but lovable British schoolmaster.

That is not Sullivan's true personality, however. Not when crossed, at any rate. This Mr. Chips has competitive instincts and a suffer-no-fools nature. He's the one you want in the foxhole with you when the shooting starts.

My guess is that the trustees saw in Nichol something of the same. When push comes to shove, when anti-intellectual troglodytes start barking, he will be an articulate defender of a celebrated academic institution.

Never mind that, according to the Denver Post, Nichol once dropped out of law school and moved to Alaska "to backpack and read Thoreau." Never mind he also worked on the 1976 presidential campaign of populist Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris. Never mind that after getting his law degree (with honors), Nichol returned to Anchorage and volunteered for the Sierra Club.

More important -- this is only conjecture -- may have been Nichol's words to the American Bar Association two years ago: "Many people my age and younger have been forced to think, really think--sometimes for the first time -- what it means to be an American," he said. "And we've seen -- at least on our good days -- that despite years of scandals and political corruption, the dominance of greed, the retreat from the public sphere, the great mass of us have not given up on the notion of an American ideal."

Politics notwithstanding, the appealing Mr. Nichol hit the board's button. That is immensely interesting, not to mention encouraging, by itself.

Morse is contributing editor of the editorial page. Send e-mail to gcmorse@cox.net. *